The SHIELD Debrief: Season 1, Episode 3 – “The Asset”

“We don’t have truth serum.”

After last week’s episode, I went into “The Asset” hesitantly, to be sure, but this week’s fare delivered more on par with the first episode: not spectacular, but very entertaining. It’s quick, witty, action-packed stuff, and if Agents of SHIELD can stay in this realm, then it’ll be on a fairly good leg, but still with room for improvement. It’s notable that in the episode not meant to bring the characters together, it did a better job of it, and without being quite as obvious. Though, it’s arguable that EVERY episode has the purpose of bringing the characters closer together, so there’s that. There was progress with Melinda, who decided that she needed to be back in combat if she was going to continue with the team — partially in order to save Coulson’s butt. There was a defining moment for Coulson himself, when he had to make the hard choice during the fight from Inception to either save some lives or potentially save a lot of lives. Coulson choosing to live in the moment and save those who were present, as well as Hall’s argument that these were decisions SHIELD made all the time, was a nice hark back to my complaint last week that SHIELD was too “white knight”. Two for you, Agents of SHIELD.

We also saw Skye progress as a potential field agent, rather than just a nerd at a computer, which left her hacking to a small cameo, but not her background: villain of the week, Tamoh Penikett lookalike David Conrad attempted to lure our Rising Tide undercover while she was… undercover (but kinda not?) into working for him. Skye chose her new SHIELD family, partially thanks to some personal sharing by Ward (anyone else really enjoy the flip they pulled on ‘Big Brother’?), but that doesn’t quite resolve how we saw her answer the Rising Tide query in the previous episode. So, surely, we have more testing of the loyalties to come in the future.

This week’s episode also played out like a small movie — giving us the origin story of a potential reoccurring character that ties into Marvel legend but remained accessible to casual viewers (like me). While anticipating the “end credits” scene to be exactly what it was, I still enjoyed the potential for growth, and for that decision to come back to bite Coulson in the ass. Hard decisions are about consequences, and good storytelling doesn’t make things easy for the characters.

“I saw plenty of action with the Avengers.” “… And you died.”

More importantly, really: Coulson still wears his suit when coming in from a water approach and climbing a beach full of patrols. Notice how Ward went all Mission Impossible, but Coulson was having none of that.

We got to see more combinations of characters like that, and the quote above, as relationships progressed. Fitzsimmons even managed to perform jobs separated from each other, giving them slightly more defining characteristics. Though, anyone else catch that even Coulson calls them by their shipper name? And speaking of ships, hopefully male! Fitzsimmons will find more personality than just trying to impress Skye in the next episode. They deserve their own moment to shine so that Skye and Ward don’t overtake them as far as personal sharing goes. It’d be nice to see someone else take an interest in the geeks, or for them to step forward, so that it doesn’t become too overloaded with certain characters over another. Balance is important with an ensemble cast, lest some become extraneous or just there to make the others look cool.

Other things of note: Melinda handed over ALL Headquarters’ communications to a known terrorist hacker? All of them?! What happened to not trusting her? This certainly seems like a step. Though I suppose we might imagine that HQ’s communications aren’t exactly in lay terms, but that doesn’t mean that Skye couldn’t do some damage with that information if she wanted to. Also, shouldn’t they wear more protective shielding than they do when handling unknown, dangerous artifacts? Everyone’s just standing around in their civvies. It seems vaguely irresponsible, if you ask me. Which you didn’t. But this is my review and you clicked it, so nyeh.

“Saying his name repeatedly does not increase productivity. Or… maybe it does.”

Lampshades! Don’t know what I’m talking about? Go drown yourself in TV Tropes and come back here after a year. No? Okay, well, lampshading involves clicking the light on a usual cliche — turning it upside-down. When Agents of SHIELD has Fitzsimmons call Coulson out for doing the typical frantic shouting of names during a countdown, it’s the pointing out of a cliche. Of course, then it works, so that’s a whole other layer of humor. It’s important to have layers, which is often what saves SHIELD — well, the show, not the organization, as most of them seem to lack in certain variations of humor the higher up you go. Skye’s finding out the hard way that making quips during a briefing is not exactly the go-to reaction. Though, hopefully, she’ll learn the lesson and not be “that person” every time or we’ll be back in cliche town.

Another example is Fitzsimmons miming Skye’s breasts and then ending up just saying “boobs” after all.

This episode also did well with tie-ins that while not perfectly subtle were also not stupidly in your face — like the PSA message of last week. Most importantly, the comment about creating muscle memory harkening to Coulson’s being “rusty”.

As a parting thought: what do you think about Coulson’s lack of muscle memory? Are those not his muscles? Is it not Coulson? And how many episodes do you think will go by before we see villain Hall (back as Graviton, of course)?